Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 21st, 2004
Synopsis
Mickey, Donald and Goofy aspire to being Musketeers, but their respective weakness,cowardice and stupidity stand in their way. All seems lost, until Peg-Leg Pete, the evil captain ofthe Musketeers, finds a use for them for his own dastardly ends: the deposing of Minnie so hecan take the throne himself. Our heroes, of course, rise to the occasion.
Plenty of songs here (some quite witty), and some sharp gags too. The Useful Lessons,however, seem to me rather more hamf...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 21st, 2004
Synopsis
The Carter family might appear to have it all. But as this is a Movie of the Week, we knowthat these people are really a dysfunctional calamity. And so they are: Dad is a tyrant, Mom isa social-climbing bitch-on-wheels, daughter is terrified of becoming like her mother and so hasan abortion behind her husband’s back rather than risk being a mother, older son (Jim Carreyin a supporting role) is a disappointment in every aspect, and Perfect Younger Son turns out tobe gay. My ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 20th, 2004
Synopsis
When midwestern Calvinist father George C. Scott’s daughter vanishes on a Church Youthtrip to California, he hires greasy PI Peter Boyle to find her. Boyle discovers a rough and nastyporn loop that she appears in. When Boyle turns out to be untrustworthy, Scott fires him andtravels to California himself, descending into the world of the sex industry in an increasinglydesperate and violent search for his daughter.
Schrader was still very much working out his own issu...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 20th, 2004
Synopsis
Tyrone Power comes from a good family and a has a fine future as a concert violinist, but hedreams of leading a band. A chance encounter in a bar leads to the formation of Alexander’sRagtime Band, with the brassy Alice Faye as singer. Power and Faye are at it hammer and tongs,so you know they’ll wind up falling in love, and so they do. But the road they must travel is notan easy one, as Faye is hired away from the band to Broadway, and Power is recruited into thearmy just i...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 19th, 2004
Synopsis
Conan O’Brien’s 10th anniversary show is pretty much what you’d expect: lots of highlightclips from the past, old friends and guests showing up on-stage (Will Ferrell, Mr. T, AndyRichter, etc.), and so on. Though the format is hardly revolutionary, the fact remains that a lot ofthese routines are extremely funny, and the parade of characters highlights just how one-of-a-kind the Conan show is, not to mention how much network TV has relaxed over the decades (justtry to imagi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 19th, 2004
Synopsis
The most unholy of characters from the Conan O’Brien show, this rubber dog has reallytaken on a life of his own. You either love this guy, or you can’t stand him. Me, I’m still laughingas I try to write this review. Included in this compilation are such routines as the controversialQuebec City visit, and Triumph’s appearance on The Hollywood Squares. Extremely rude andnasty, but quite appallingly funny too.
Audio
The 2.0 audio is certainly adequate ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 19th, 2004
Synopsis
Ashley Olsen is the anal-retentive honour student who is off to New York to give a speech.Rocker bad-girl sister Mary-Kate is skipping school in order to hit the Big Apple also, hoping tocrash a music video shoot for the benefit of her band. Everything conspires against their success,with the principle antagonists being Eugene Levy as the obsessive truant officer after Mary-Kate,and Andy Richter (sporting a Chinese accent) as a music pirate whose crucial computer chipwinds ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 18th, 2004
Synopsis
Goldie Hawn plays Lou Jean, a woman as hysterical as she is stupid (she makes the bag ofhammers look like Kierkegaard), descends on her slightly more intelligent husband, Clovis(William Atherton). Clovis is four months from release from prison, but she insists he break outRIGHT NOW and come with her to fetch their baby Langston from his foster home in Sugarland.They wind up taking Texas State Trooper Michael Sacks hostage, and travel across Texas,pursued by what looks like ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 18th, 2004
Synopsis
Virginia Madsen and Kasi Lemmons are working on a thesis on urban legends. They haveheard several version of the Candyman story, and they trace it back to its origins at the horrificChicago housing project Cabrini Green. Madsen destroys the legend by exposing the truth, whichforces the legend to become real. Candyman (Tony Todd) frames Madsen for his own crimes,and threatens worse unless she voluntarily surrenders to be his victim.
Writer/director Bernard Rose (whos...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 18th, 2004
Synopsis
Recently divorced Diane Wiest moves with her two sons Jason Patric and Corey Haim tothe California community of Santa Carla, where teenage vampires (headed by Kiefer Sutherland)cruise the boardwalk. Patric is initiated into the gang, but resists his vampiric urges, and Haimcalls in gonzo teen vampire hunters Corey Feldman and Jamsion Newlander to fight thebloodsuckers.
During the 1980s, some tributaries of the horror genre flowed into some very stagnant, fetidswam...









